Robert Eastwood

Tikopia Island, Pacific Ocean

I smell the stench. No buried breadfruit.
No swamp taro. No bruised bananas.
No sand-sucking clams. Limp, empty nets.
Wasted, women hold hot stones to their bellies,
& desperation rows sons into the open mouthof a sun-licked sea. Down-to-bone starvingas far as tomorrow.
I have a vision: a father asks a new mother,Whose is this child no field can feed?
He lays the newborn’s face on tufa.
Winds of what afflict me takethis soft spirit over the lake’sbrackishness, over the black horizon.
No one but me wails as it goes.

Karla Linn Merrifield

The Walkers
Starburst in the morning sky
of crisscrossed contrails—
where is everyone going
in every direction?
I can only account for myself,
my destination no farther
than the intersection
of Bayshore and Baypointe
and back, a mere easy mile on foot,
and twice past five empty benches
where in later years he would sit,
catch his breath, ease muscle pain,
and watch the kingfishers, remembering
a day he did twelve circuits in fewer hours,
leaving every shady seat to the feeble.
Those are the empty benches
I recall as I stride by them.

seventeen years under this ground they’ve sipped
rain siphoned through blades of grass
suckled roots of black walnuts maples a single magnolia
a million beneath this acre

last night they climbed through the dark
tiny hills of crumbled dirt
up tree trunks & the sides
of an old red garage
shed their root/yellow
carapace & emerged pale
& white a large red
eye on either side of their head
three tiny red marks between

their wings wet shriveled
unfold translucent in the morning
& lift their now florescent
green bodies in
to the flickering canopy a chorus
of male sopranos (one’s highest note
could break
a female’s drum if sung
by her ear) swells
& fills the light at noon
drenches the air becomes a desperate
carnival of maracas a frenzy
of rattles then bursts
into joyous scatterings
of seed

six weeks for the eggs to hatch
for the blind nymphs
to form then fall
from the trees for the earth
to take them in

Marissa Sumiré

Breathing Lessons

I first learned how to breathe for singing.

My teacher told me to put one hand on my side and the other hand on my sternum. “Your lungs should expand on all sides. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth, slowly letting the air hiss out of your lips, a long string of sound.”

When people get nervous, they forget to breathe or they breathe too much.

When people exercise, they often grow stiff like dry branches. Breathing should be a natural function of the human body, yet it amazes me how easy it is to forget.

Breathing also gives me the illusion of control. When I jog, I breathe to the rhythm of my strides. The physical struggle to stay calm and keep going despite the burning constriction I feel in my lungs, that expresses something within me.

I can endure the weight, of myself, of the air, this context.

Afterward comes catharsis, the post-run collapse in the grass staring at